Dark Souls II - What they can do to make it better @ Kotaku

2. Not all demands will be met because not all are reasonable for a game. On top of that, I think there are some really bad decisions made to widen appeal.

Overall, to people arguing with me, consider these two points:
1. Do you think the challenging gameplay could be considered the central defining element of the Souls games? Think about all the conversations you've ever read about these games. All the reviews. All the previews. The interviews. The comments. Is there a single element of these games that is discussed more often and more intensively?

2. If your answer to 1. is 'Yes,' should a game developer really be moving resources -away- from the central defining feature of a game in order to appeal to a completely different audience?

If your answer to both is 'Yes,' then we completely disagree, and we should depart in opposite directions from this conversation. If your answer to 1. is 'No,' then I really don't understand where you're coming from on Souls.

How reasonable it is to add a tutorial to a game that is supposed to be for players who can figure things out by themselves?

I love all the comments on how the game isn't hard, where isn't hard amounts to it just requires you to take it super-seriously with unfaltering attention that doesn't miss any of your opponent's weaknesses and doesn't make any mistakes. A hyper-vigilant, patient, dedicated Sherlock Holmes may be able to beat the game without dying, but that doesn't fault everyone else for not wanting or being able to play the game that way.

Be serious now, the game was hard and it was hardcore. I finished it and I despised that I got addicted enough to finish it. Everything was wonderful except the difficulty. I hated being punished by the game wasting 5 minutes of my time making me walk back each time I died. I would love for them to figure out a different way to make it hard besides wasting enormous amounts of the player's time.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
How reasonable it is to add a tutorial to a game that is supposed to be for players who can figure things out by themselves?

It is diversion of resources.

I think it's a lot more reasonable to give players a short introduction to the controls and the basics concepts than to create an entirely alternate mode for the entire game.

Don't get me wrong, I think you could relatively easily up HP and attack power, but I think From Software cares a little bit more than that about what the game is. It'd be like making an Easy mode for an Adventure game and just, I don't know, offering the answers for each puzzle if they aren't solved quickly enough. The game is designed encounter by encounter.

Originally Posted by Burress
I love all the comments on how the game isn't hard, where isn't hard amounts to it just requires you to take it super-seriously with unfaltering attention that doesn't miss any of your opponent's weaknesses and doesn't make any mistakes. A hyper-vigilant, patient, dedicated Sherlock Holmes may be able to beat the game without dying, but that doesn't fault everyone else for not wanting or being able to play the game that way.

Except your hyperbolic strawman bullshit will not lead you anywhere in this argument.
The game isn't particularly hard not because "a hyper-vigilant Sherlock Holmes may be able to play without dying", but because a bit of awareness about what you are doing makes it actually even easy at places.
For instance, after familiarizing a bit with that area, now I could hardly imagine myself dying at any point during Undead Burg.

And that's not because I'm some sort of pro gamer (believe me, I'm not) but at least I'm not impaired or retarded, which makes me understand that -for instance- staying on guard with the shield up makes me incredibly well protected against most enemies, until I find a opening to attack.
Here's the thing: being vigilant would give you enough edge to prevent a brutal death, but even if you weren't paying enough attention, you would learn from that.

Beside, I'm not sure why you are trying to imply that to be fair the game should allow you to play the whole game without dying. A game where -even unaware of the challenges ahead- you are hardly at risk to die it's not what I would call "fair", it's what I would call "retard-proof". Like Fable.

On the other hand whoever claims "Well, I don't think dying 100 times is fun!" should ask himself "Why the hell I'm doing the same mistake 100 times in a row? Am I that stupid?".

Ahh, the humility inducing nature of this game. It's so utterly reassuring when doing something incredibly stupid within your first three hours of playing (in my case, it was accidentally murdering the merchant in the Undead Burg) and to then find that the internet is full of such cases.

An interesting topic all round, with some lively arguments. I might post a little more once I've learned a whole lot more.

Again: How easy or hard you find a challenge is completely individual. It's impossible to taylor the individual experience unless you let individuals taylor it themselves.

I spent well over 100 hours playing Dark Souls and got as far as the Duke's Archives Prison Tower before I quit. That is how hard it was for me. And to me, difficulty is a matter of how much time I wish to spend with a game. If the lore and atmosphere are good, I can take a higher difficulty. Personally, I think 30 hours would have been reasonable in this case. I would have been perfectly happy with the difficulty if I had gotten as far in 30 hours. Then I would probably have continued to complete the rest of the game.

Again: An easy mode would not "destroy" or even alter the game for anybody who wants a challenge. It would not prevent you from playing the hard mode. (No, really, it wouldn't.) It would let players decide how much time they wish to spend completing the game.

And it would not require extra resources. For Dark Souls, reducing the damage taken by half for "easy" and by half again for "way too easy" would probably suffice.

Originally Posted by killias2
It'd be like making an Easy mode for an Adventure game and just, I don't know, offering the answers for each puzzle if they aren't solved quickly enough. The game is designed encounter by encounter.

I suppose that's an attempt at irony, but it's not such a bad idea, really. The way the lore of the world is presented through scattered clues in Dark Souls reminds med of Myst and Riven. Those games were pretty hard too, though in an entirely different way. Why no let the game notice when the player is stumped and offer additional clues or hints? Of course, you should be able to reject that help if you insist on figuring everything out for yourself.

Originally Posted by killias2
I think it's a lot more reasonable to give players a short introduction to the controls and the basics concepts than to create an entirely alternate mode for the entire game.

The previous question did not come about tutorials in general. It came after calling specifics to certain games.

Here again: how is it reasonable to give a tutorial to a game that was supposed to be for players who can figure things out by themselves?

So back to the previous remark, since some demands by gamers are accessed, why other demands should not be?

Originally Posted by Mr Smiley
Again: How easy or hard you find a challenge is completely individual. It's impossible to taylor the individual experience unless you let individuals taylor it themselves.

How hard or easy is it to take a turn in car with a broken steering system?

And it would not require extra resources. For Dark Souls, reducing the damage taken by half for "easy" and by half again for "way too easy" would probably suffice.

.

Right this is the point it would not be difficulty to implement and is why these kinds of things are so easy to mod with a program like cheat engine, beside that things like subtitles, custom controls and difficulty setting should be standard game features. If for no other reason than to help disabled gamers, which people keep seeming to ignore.

An easy mode(or perhaps very easy mode) might be the only way some people will be able to play the game, as they physically won't be able to otherwise and for them the game might still be very hard, but at least doable just like it is for normal gamers.

Originally Posted by Kefka
If for no other reason than to help disabled gamers, which people keep seeming to ignore.

We are ignoring them for different reasons: first, that's not what this argument is about.
Second, I've known a good share of disabled gamers and difficulty is hardly an issue for many of them. Usually the problem is if the control scheme is suited for them or not.
Third, because not every single game is supposed to be suited for disabled gamers. I can sympathize with their struggle to find something they can play, but to ask that every game should be toned down in difficulty to be suited for their needs would be like asking to simplify the rules of a football game (or any sport, for all that matters) just because some people are not too good to run.
Well, I'm sorry for your problem, but in the end it's your problem, not mine. Go and find something suited for you, don't ask me to compromise what I enjoy a lot just so you could like it too.

An easy mode(or perhaps very easy mode) might be the only way some people will be able to play the game

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
How hard or easy is it to take a turn in car with a broken steering system?

What do you even mean by that? An easy mode would not break the game.

Originally Posted by Tuco
…but to ask that every game should be toned down in difficulty to be suited for their needs would be like asking to simplify the rules of a football game (or any sport, for all that matters) just because some people are not too good to run.

The parallell is unvalid for a single player game, because it's not a competitive sport. Dark Souls has an online pvp element, and I agree that for pvp there should be one difficulty only. To disable pvp in easy mode would not be difficult, though.

Originally Posted by Tuco
Go and find something suited for you, don't ask me to compromise what I enjoy a lot just so you could like it too.

I bought Dark Souls. My money is as good as yours. I'm a customer too. And what I want is an offline single player game with difficulty settings, which the developers could easily provide without compromising your game at all. I can't understand why you would begrudge me that, when it would make no difference to your game.

Originally Posted by Mr Smiley
What do you even mean by that? An easy mode would not break the game.

The parallell is unvalid for a single player game, because it's not a competitive sport. Dark Souls has an online pvp element, and I agree that for pvp there should be one difficulty only. To disable pvp in easy mode would not be difficult, though.

I bought Dark Souls. My money is as good as yours. I'm a customer too. And what I want is an offline single player game with difficulty settings, which the developers could easily provide without compromising your game at all. I can't understand why you would begrudge me that, when it would make no difference to your game.

If a game renowned for its difficulty is too difficult for you, I'm sorry that I don't feel too bad about that. If I buy a game known for its multiplayer, I don't get disappointed if the single player is anemic. Not all games are for all tastes. That's a good thing. Not everything needs to be lowest common denominator.

I think the difficulty is in the core of DS. Atmosphere wouldnt be like that if we had difficulty options. and that feeling whenever you defeat a boss, never come to you if it had a difficulty option + the game difficulty is'nt in combat itself, it's in exploration too. if you explore somewhere wrong, you have to go back and go in the right direction. i call it difficulty as well as mystery! sometimes it should be like this to be mysterious. and ofcourse there was someways to lower the difficulty, but again it's all back to exploration of the game. like we have rusted iron ring which was very usefull and if you went to the blightown without it, you'd die simply

Originally Posted by killias2
If a game renowned for its difficulty is too difficult for you, I'm sorry that I don't feel too bad about that… Not all games are for all tastes. That's a good thing. Not everything needs to be lowest common denominator.

The renowned difficulty of Dark Souls is a cheap trick; a marketing ploy, really. As others have noted, it makes you "feel like a king" when you beat the game. But any game can be made difficult, or even impossible. It's not what makes the game good.

You want to feel superior, member of an exclusive "hard core" elite, playing a game not accessible to lesser, more "casual" players? That's it, isn't it?

And I think it's a shitty attitude.

Because you can have your game. I don't begrudge you that difficulty and false sense of achievement. You can have it. Why then, do you begrudge me my game? Why, when an easy mode would not prevent you from playing the hard mode?

Originally Posted by Mr Smiley
The renowned difficulty of Dark Souls is a cheap trick; a marketing ploy, really. As others have noted, it makes you "feel like a king" when you beat the game. But any game can be made difficult, or even impossible. It's not what makes the game good.

You want to feel superior, member of an exclusive "hard core" elite, playing a game not accessible to lesser, more "casual" players? That's it, isn't it?

And I think it's a shitty attitude.

Because you can have your game. I don't begrudge you that difficulty and false sense of achievement. You can have it. Why then, do you begrudge me my game? Why, when an easy mode would not prevent you from playing the hard mode?

"You want to feel superior, member of an exclusive "hard core" elite, playing a game not accessible to lesser, more "casual" players? That's it, isn't it?"

No, I want to enjoy a game that's challenging. For Christ's sake, what's so wrong with that? What's so wrong with wanting a game where the focus is on creating a challenging experience? I've already said that my problem isn't with accessibility. It's with the core game experience. This is a game built around a certain level of challenge. The lore, the music, the atmosphere, the respawn and saving mechanics, the quasi-multiplayer and online messages - they're all built around a challenging game. The moment you stop designing a game around that experience you start designing a completely different game. Again, if you want an easy Action RPG, there are -ample- options.

Seriously, answer this simple question: should every game be designed for absolutely everyone? Or do you accept SOME specialization? SOME ability for designers to design a game for an audience?

Originally Posted by Mr Smiley
The renowned difficulty of Dark Souls is a cheap trick; a marketing ploy, really. As others have noted, it makes you "feel like a king" when you beat the game. But any game can be made difficult, or even impossible. It's not what makes the game good.

And this is exactly where you are *completely* wrong.
Everyone can make a game that is simply hard or frustrating, that's true. But what makes DS stand out compared to many games today is exactly how it achieves the goal to be mildly challenging (because let's face it, it's not even that hard, it has this reputation just because many gamers are spoiled sissies today) without ever being unfair or frustrating just for the sake of it.
I could list dozens of games that are more challenging than Dark Souls (virtually any coin op from the '90s, for a start) but very few that are so gratifying.

That's where the good system design -and not the "cheap tricks", as you claim- shines.
The game punishes repeated mistakes, but it also gives to you all the tools to avoid them.
And it also gives you the tools to make even the most challenging parts trivially easy if you really want (a wonderfully integrated co-op: if you are lucky you can find a companion that can manage that boss you had a hard time with even alone).
Every time you die, you never feel like the game has cheated you, you have to admit you probably did something wrong.
Common enemies are all about learning the pattern and then they are hardly a problem. Bosses hit hard, but they also die very fast, with just few strikes, if properly handled. They aren't "hard" just because you need to hit them a million times.

The game also offers you hints before a challenge or danger and it also gives you a mechanic where no matter how dumbly and brutally you went toward you death, you will have a chance to pick up everything you lost in the process.
Unless, of course, you are not going to repeat the same mistake twice in a row, which -once again- at that point makes you the one in fault. Not the game.

Originally Posted by Mr Smiley
Because you can have your game. I don't begrudge you that difficulty and false sense of achievement. You can have it. Why then, do you begrudge me my game? Why, when an easy mode would not prevent you from playing the hard mode?

Because that stupid "easy mode" would have a huge influence over the game's design, no matter how blindly people like you will keep claiming otherwise.

It's like with the fast travel argument in RPGs like Oblivion/Skyrim: "You can just ignore it!!!1!".
No I can't, because when the game is designed around the idea that the player will be able to warp distances at any time, that affects the design of everything: quests, landscape, content distribution and so on.

I prefer the challenge to match the vision of the developers. Most developers put in several difficulty modes because they know they'll reach a wider audience, and not because they think the experience should differ based on who you are. A true visionary knows exactly what he wants - and he shouldn't compromise because of wanting applause from more people. Obviously, that's not how it works in the gaming industry - but it'd be nice.

So, if a game is supposed to be hard or they want me to pay attention - that's exactly what they should balance for.

That's what I like about Dark Souls. That's not to say the balance is perfect or that the game is anywhere close to perfect. Personally, I think it's rather barren and sparse - and I actually despise the focus on boss monster encounters. That makes me think of arcade games of the past more than a meaty RPG experience.

It's also a bit predictable and rigid in terms of the effect on exploration and the sensation of non-linearity. You're blocked by big bosses, and you know they have a pattern or some puzzle you have to figure out to proceed. That's artificial and dreary to me, but I recognise that most people seem to enjoy designs that focus on boss fights. I think it's an archaic practice that needs to go - and I especially despise "puzzly" boss fights that have nothing to do with an actual tactical battle or common sense.